dispatches.

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“the major problem of life is learning how to handle the costly interruptions. the door that slams shut, the plan that got sidetracked, the marriage that failed. or that lovely poem that didn’t get written because someone knocked on the door.”

martin luther king jr.

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we never know what burdens others carry. we should judge people less and more slowly, if at all. and the grief does not ever totally subside. there is a famous quote: "when you're going through hell, keep going." it's true, we must, but we are no longer the same people.

frank daley, nytimes letter to the editor on the death of tatiana schlossberg

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i love cafeterias. i love all things quotidian because they feel so wonderfully human. i am back in beijing staying with my aunt and uncle and there is a cantine that opened a few years ago just a few minutes from their apartment. with my jet lag, i ended up there half past six a few days ago and it felt so magical to be there early, with just a few other folks drifting in and out, all of us so anonymous in each other’s presence, just seeking out a bit of warmth and sustenance to light the day.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/19/world/americas/brazil-amazon-tribe-piripkura.html

finally going through old tabs and read this story. it's incredible -- to reject modernity so fully and really be the last of a people

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energy

am i wasting time or living my best life?

last night at music together it was the first time in a long time when i felt energized. usually i feel completely depleted, in a daze just trying to get through the evening til dinnertime, and then trying to last from bathtime to bedtime. but last night i felt present and engaged and grounded.

maybe i was living a vampiric existence before. all i know is that i feel more alive than ever before and i'm not ready to let go of feeling this way.

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is there anything more splendid than this view of mt. hood?

i happened to be in washington park this morning doing a zoo dropoff when i remembered the japanese garden was nearby and i had a very underutilized membership waiting for me.

taking the detour has proved to be so reenergizing. the garden is bathed in silence this time of day, as i had gotten there right after opening. you can feel the enchantment walking around among the trees and springs. in the hubbub of everyday life, it’s easy to forget to break out of all-too familiar routines and remember there are other urban escapes to be enjoyed.

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this past weekend, i put together a gallery wall. it came together in the most basic fashion: with command hooks and the cheapest IKEA frames i could find but contained within it were some treasured kid artwork i’d held onto for far too long without taking action.

ever since it went up, every time i pass by it, i am filled with a kind of pleasure of having midwifed something into being.

for a while now, i’ve felt this creative itch to start doing things. the office was another example. being decisive and letting my creative energy find new outlets has been so liberating and satisfying.

i can’t wait to find out what tomorrow holds. i can’t wait to share more.

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office decisions (a sequel?)

last week, i wrote about the long-fated decision that i needed to make about office storage. did i go out that afternoon to buy a cabinet? no, i did not.

but the contemplation sparked a movement inside me to at least start looking. i had a hunch that i could probably snag something second-hand off of facebook marketplace that would get the job done and require little to no assembly on my part. i searched diligently every day or two looking for something that would fit and yesterday... i found it.

rather than finding a sideboard, i ended up with a TV stand but it gives me a starting point to start thinking about what artwork i'd like to hang between the horizontal shelf unit above and the stand below. i have three drawers now, whereas before i had none. and visually it brings a sense of completeness, a bottom where before there was only a top. i spent the last week also de-cluttering a bit to create space for the soon-to-be cabinetry that i was to acquire, so that now there is much less on the floor and much more closeted or boxed.

it felt good to be decisive on this and to have the decision now made. i yoyo-ed a lot on whether to buy, even up to the very last moment i walked up to the owner's house, because i wasn't sure if it would look ok. but now, when i look behind me as i type, i see something much closer to completion now than a few hours before, and that makes me feel a great sense of relief.

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manifesting

i have an idea of what life i could lead. i see it in glimpses in my closet, on screen, in my office, in my dreams. i have stirrings in my soul.

i've also learned some things about myself that i didn't know in my twenties. i've lived in places i no longer need to return to. i've tried on schools and jobs that didn't suit me, but i got through it. i know there are opportunities and places i would turn down today that maybe i would've felt hesitant to do so right out of college.

i've had life experiences i wish everyone would have and others that i wouldn't wish upon anyone. just in this year alone, it's felt like surprise upon un-redeeming loss upon grief upon a welcome goodbye and an exultation -- and the year isn't over yet.

i guess what i mean is that i had no idea, five or ten years ago, the place i'd find myself in today. and now i actually feel wiser, and more empowered, less self-conscious and more self-assured, and maybe that's as good as any a place to begin to manifest the future i know is calling to me.

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is my duolingo streak longer than yours? (probably not)

i've been trying to stay consistent about duolingo chinese for the past two weeks. i think i've realized that i can't stay consistent with my chinese studies unless it's portable and i get annoying reminders. for a long time, i still ignored those reminders but i feel intrinsically motivated at the moment to continue. hopefully by the time i next go to china i will be just a little more fluent than the last.

here are some things i like about the app:

it makes learning feel fun: i probably rolled my eyes the first time i saw the cartoonish owl but since then, i've come to appreciate the app design. it definitely feels more like a game and they keep it interesting by introducing different practice styles (listening, writing, flashcards).

being able to skip ahead anytime: as a functionally illiterate chinese student, i can still sometimes infer a foreign character by referencing the other known characters around it so i started out at level 10 but when i got bored repeating many characters i already knew, i was able to skip to level 30 and now be at a level where most of the characters i'm encountering are new / i'm feeling more challenged.

here are some things that really annoy me:

hearts -> energy mechanics: since the last time i was actively engaged, they've changed from a "hearts" model where you can go for as long as you want as long as you don't make mistakes (you lose a heart for every mistake you make) to an "energy" model where you are expending energy as you do the exercises. i can usually get 2-3 exercises in before i'm asked to recharge or i need to pay gems to refill or watch an ad to refill and even then it doesn't last. this feels like it's meant to encourage upgrades but i find it actually helps timebound the amount of time i spend in the app which is maybe a good thing? clearly not their intent though.

too much hanzi: i think stroke order is something, like cursive, that is dying a slow death. but in the meantime, duolingo is putting too much emphasis on it so that i'm losing energy for characters i know how to write because the stroke order is technically wrong. also i find they tend to pick the simpler hanzi in a pair of words.

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"we were fractious and overpaid."

quite possibly the most memorable opening line to any book i've ever read. or, at least, the only one i remember. i need to read more joshua ferris, i read this work nearly a decade ago.

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art on walls (finally)

an old manager once told me that their mother told them it never feels like home til you've put art on walls.

i've been holding onto remnants of the past for a long time. all the artifacts i picked up while traveling in africa, i had brought home in hopes that one day, in an imaginary house, i'd be able to put them up.

and when we got to our first house, nothing felt right. everything was so bespoke, it felt like too much of a contrast to put up kente cloth besides 1930s french doors. and so much of it sat in storage -- for over a decade.

but lately, i've finally gotten around to unboxing it all and trying to find places for it to go on walls. my neighbor helped me sew a loop through which i could hang said kente cloth on the wall near my kitchen. i finally found the right cheap ikea frame in which to display a painting i picked up in addis on my first trip to africa. another ikea frame with an etsy mat has gone up with my malawi painting of bicyclists near the playroom.

as i've started to put these works up, i feel like there's a part of myself unfurling too. i'm re-acquainting myself with the old me, and it feels like i'm getting back to myself.

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memories of kansai

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to cabinet, or not to cabinet

about two years ago, when my oldest was getting to the age where she could open doors, i moved my office into my parent's house. at the time, the idea of having my own office was so appealing and the room was tantalizingly spare.

a few months later, my dad deposited loads of moving boxes from my childhood that he'd dutifully packed when they'd moved cross-country. these boxes contained artwork, school essays, summer reading buttons, camp letters, and all manner of other minutiae that make up a child's life. he'd delivered the goods, and the swedish death cleaning would be my responsibility.

so here i've sat in my extremely cluttered office, detritus strewn everywhere, my computer camera strategically positioned to hide all of it. i've sat through two remote jobs from this memory landfill.

in my defense, i've tried to clean parts of it. the books were easiest and many ended up in a goodwill donation. clothes were also easy, especially the ones that never fit. but everything else has felt hard, maybe because as a parent you don't know what of your life your kids might want when they're older, or that you'd like to pass down.

rather than make all those decisions at once, i've concluded that i need a more intermediate solution which is storage. i need to be able to at least reduce the visual clutter so i can prioritize the sorting someday. so, with all my spare time, perhaps today will be the day i go to ikea and finally make the decision on which storage -- besta! samstad! -- will bring my home office back to a state of zen.

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and now

did you think you were going to die the same year as dick cheney and the pope?

neither of us knew that when we were watching vice that january evening, somewhere near market street, me having just come off my china flight so jetlagged but trying to keep awake and just excited to be together again.

the part of the film that has stayed most with me is where they cut to cheney and his wife retiring to become golden retriever breeders. it was comic and maybe because of that element, also memorable.

and now i'm here, on the other side of a loss so great it's hard for me to process most days. you haunt my dreams and many of my days. just the other day i drove by the hollywood theatre where, on the marquee, they were showing brazil, which i remember we watched while you were recovering from a weeklong cold at my cousin's house. the week you passed they were showing creating rem lazer, which felt like someone's sick joke.

see that's the thing -- you're gone but you're also everywhere. before you died, you were discrete. you could only occupy a single physical place at one time, and for those months i preferred to put you out of my mind altogether. but i remember distinctly, the moment you died, it somehow democratized your memory in a way that allowed me to finally feel all the emotions i'd been holding back in the month and a half of waiting. and ever since then, the focus of my grief has gone in and out, some days sharper than others.

what does any of this mean? honestly, probably nothing. it's anyone's guess. but i know the missing part is real.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/04/opinion/ai-tech-human-interaction.html?smid=url-share

how do we get off this train

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same coffee, different city